Episode 6, Talking South Carolina Jay Lavrinc Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce Interview

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett “Hey, guys, I’ve got with me today, Jay Lavrinc. He is the director of customer relations and at the floor, the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce. Hey, Jay.”

Jay Lavrinc Good morning.

Jay Lavrinc How are you?

Angela Barrett I am good. Thanks for being here today.

Jay Lavrinc So my pleasure.

Angela Barrett “Have you always, been in Florence? Is your family from Florence?”

Jay Lavrinc “Well, you can tell by my accent that I’m not from the South.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, I.”

Jay Lavrinc “Grew up in the a in a little town called Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I would say, corporate. I don’t, you know, some, some military brats call themselves corporate military brat. I think I was a corporate brat. I worked my way up into the organization and, had some fairly high global positions back in the day. And so I have not always been from the South, but I do enjoy where I am.”

Jay Lavrinc “And I moved here about 14 years ago to Florence, in South Carolina here and, joined every day of it.”

Angela Barrett “Well, good. Well, good. My hometown is not far from there, so, so tell me about the Greater Florence Chamber.”

Jay Lavrinc “Well, yeah.”

Jay Lavrinc “Let me, let me go back. So I was, I was running an organization here called maybe, I retired from there, kind of. And, I was approached by the chamber because I knew a lot of people here within, the Florence area. They asked if I would be their director of client services or customer service.”

Jay Lavrinc “That for sure. I’d love to do that, because I like people. And, you know, Florence has grown in the last 14 years. I can tell people that, when I first came down here, you probably wouldn’t go through downtown Florence, without a police escort.”

Jay Lavrinc But now you can walk the streets. Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc How much? True.

Jay Lavrinc “It’s almost, you know, last.”

Angela Barrett I grew up right around there.

Jay Lavrinc “Right. So, it’s almost true. But, now you can walk the streets. They have great restaurants. They have far different, you know, boutiques. And, it’s a beautiful place to come and and visit and enjoy. We’ve got a couple hotels downtown. We’ve got a bunch of hotels across the area. A lot along the I-95 corridor.”

Jay Lavrinc “There’s two major hotel chains here, all and range. And they’ve brand most of the hotels. But they’ve got, you know, pictures downtown. They’ve got the, town hall. They’ve got, how, like Ivy cafe. I mean, there’s so many places you can have a little bit of a dinner, drink or whatever you like, and, you know, you can just stroll along.”

Jay Lavrinc “We got the the bankers, general store here. That’s something new. It’s kind of cool if, if you’re not a, a rotary dial phone person, it’s a good opportunity to take your kids in there and see what they do. I seen a lot of kids struggle. Try to dial a phone.”

Jay Lavrinc Because I see that today.

Jay Lavrinc “Today, we don’t even remember numbers, do we? We just have a name in there. We press the name, and off we go. So.”

Jay Lavrinc Right.

Jay Lavrinc “And that’s that’s interesting, because my wife’s number, I always have to look it up if I have to look it up. So it’s just in my phone, I press it and I talk to her, but, Yeah. So it’s, it’s grown quite a bit. I was on a tour early on, and they said they were going to revitalize, downtown.”

Jay Lavrinc “And they have done some great things, some great things like that, some, you know, burn scars. Holy smoke and, little jazz. These are a couple other restaurants down there. So if you, you know, if you have a desire to have an evening out, you can come down here. We’ve got the museum, we’ve got the performing arts center.”

Jay Lavrinc “They always have good, you know, concerts and stuff. There. We got the little theater. A little theater here is pretty interesting. And, and then. Okay, if I go into that a little bit.”

Angela Barrett “Oh, absolutely.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. The little theater here is pretty much locals who are cast to be in place. And my wife and I got involved probably about 5 or 6 years ago, just going in. They are amazing. It’s amazing the local talent we have here. There are people here that probably should be, on a professional level, but instead, you know, have family and have other jobs and, and they do this, on the side kind of but that but the but the programing and the performance is just absolutely excellent.”

Jay Lavrinc “And we also have Symphony here. I mean, you know, Florence City is only about 40,000 people. The county’s only about 136,000. But we actually have a symphony and they’re excellent.”

Jay Lavrinc Oh. So you if you.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, if you have and we have the Performing Arts Center, which is, Francis Marion University has the performing arts center. It’s a beautiful, beautiful facility. And I think you can rent that out for parties, stuff like that. But it’s the acoustics, and they’re great. They just did a rock concert kind of thing. It was pretty cool.”

Jay Lavrinc “That was just a couple weeks ago. I went to that. So I get involved, you know, not only with, the chamber, but I get involved personally in Florence. And, that was kind of when I came down here. That’s what I kind of asked the employees. When I worked at the EB, I said, what’s there to do?”

Jay Lavrinc And their first answer is nothing.

Jay Lavrinc But their.

Angela Barrett That.

Jay Lavrinc Right.

Jay Lavrinc “There has a lot to do if you want, if you want to spend the time and and sort out different things, there’s lots to do. For example, with the, downtown development group has a Florence after five. It’s the last Friday of every month starting in May, and I think it ends in September. So the last Friday of the month, they closed down Dargan Street.”

Jay Lavrinc “They have a band, they have vendors, they have beverages of all kinds. You know, it’s an opportunity for people to listen to great bands that come in to dance to have some, you know, food from food trucks to come in and have some if they’re adults, adult beverages if they’re not kid beverages. So it’s, a great opportunity to see some neighbors, see some people maybe hadn’t seen in a while.”

Jay Lavrinc And it’s just a good time to come down and mingle.

Angela Barrett “Yeah. Tell me this. I know when I was young, there was a, I don’t know what you call it. I mean, it was like a diner, but you had the old timey, counter where you sit on the round stools and you get ice cream sodas and all that good stuff. Still there?”

Jay Lavrinc “No, that’s not there.”

Jay Lavrinc But they are.

Jay Lavrinc “An ice cream parlor to downtown. Yeah. Now we’ll be opening here in the next couple of months. That’s going to be right on. Evans. But no, that one is not around anymore, unfortunately.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah. No, that was a cool one. So that was.”

Jay Lavrinc Back in the.

Angela Barrett “Day. Yeah, it was, it was. It’s been a minute. So what? Florence, what brought.”

Jay Lavrinc You by.

Jay Lavrinc “Florence as far as my well, I was, I brought I was brought down here for a position.”

Angela Barrett “Oh, I gotcha, I gotcha, and then you sort. I fell into the chamber.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. Well, okay, that’s a that’s kind of a good way of putting. Yeah, I kind of fell into it.”

Jay Lavrinc “But I was, you know, the ceiling. Yeah.”

Jay Lavrinc “And, and when I left Pittsburgh, I went to my son, and I said, my son is Chrome. And I said, here’s my snow shovels and anything that I need snow gear. And he said, dad, why are you not why are you giving me this? And I said, because I don’t intend to somewhat show any snow anymore.”

Jay Lavrinc “No, no.”

Jay Lavrinc And that’s where that’s why I like it here.

Angela Barrett “That’s right. You know, one of the things that amazes me, I do real estate, in real life and, you know, people always say, well, how much snow do you get, how cold it is. Unless you were asking all the questions.”

Jay Lavrinc Right.

Angela Barrett “You need to know how far it’s going to get because like right now it gets, you know, we’re in the hundreds and we’re still preheating. It is June.”

Jay Lavrinc So that’s.

Jay Lavrinc Right. We haven’t even gotten to July and.

Jay Lavrinc August for sure. It’s a year. And we’re just we’re just touching.

Jay Lavrinc “Below 100 right now. We’re we’re doing the you know, the heat index. My wife’s always like, the heat index. I’m like, I kind of just what temperatures are going to be. That’s all I care about. But the humidity is the big thing. And, you know, you know, it’ll suffocate you. But, you get used to it, you know, that’s what I tell.”

Jay Lavrinc “But I will say this. I call my brother probably every February January timeframe. And I say, what are you doing now? I’m shoveling snow.”

Jay Lavrinc Hey.

Jay Lavrinc “Guess what? I’m done. He said, don’t tell me you’re golfing. And I said, okay, I won’t tell you I’m golfing, but I’m golfing.”

Jay Lavrinc That’s right.

Jay Lavrinc “You know, it’s temperate in the winter. I mean, you’re you’re you’re average day temperatures in the 50s. I mean, it’s a great, it’s a great climate in South Carolina.”

Angela Barrett “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And you know, in South Carolina, especially where I am, I’m right outside of Columbia, and you can get to the beach, or you can get to the mountains within about a 2.5 hour, you know, time frame. Because we kind of have it all, and good weather where there is not much snow to have to shovel or any where are you an hour, but maybe some in the mountains.”

Jay Lavrinc But but you.

Jay Lavrinc “Can go, you know, and that’s the thing about South Carolina, which people don’t understand. It’s not just a coastal state. I mean, it does go to the coast, but they have mountains. As you get up into Columbia and, you know, towards your area up north. So they do sometimes get some snow up there if they’re, if they’re interested in the snow.”

Jay Lavrinc “Florence, of course, is, you know, about an hour and 20 minutes, hour and a half from Columbia. And then we’re about an hour and ten hour and 20 from the beach. So if you think about Florence, it’s kind of centrally located. We’re about 50 some miles south of North Carolina border, right between Columbia and Myrtle Beach. We’re about two hours from Charleston.”

Jay Lavrinc “I mean, you know, it’s a central location. We’re not we’re not the capital of the state, but we’re the central location. We’re kind of centralized in the PD region, which, you know, that entices a lot of people to come here. I know a lot of northerners are moving out of the states that they’re in right now.”

Jay Lavrinc A lot of that is a lot of that is taxes to.

Jay Lavrinc Pay taxes.

Jay Lavrinc “Here are, you know, quite less expensive for a house. I would say quite less about I think I pay about one eighth what I did when I was in pimp’s. Me and my house is much bigger. Worth more money. Yeah, I pay less taxes. So that’s kind of a plus plus plus.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Absolutely. And you know, the interesting you know, you’re right there at 20 and 95. So yes, getting to Florence is, kind of easy peasy.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah. It is.

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “And and it’s an interesting it’s an interesting scenario. The, the total midpoint from New York City to Miami, Florida is Florence. It’s the same distance from New York City to Florence as it is Florence to Miami, which I found very interesting. I didn’t know that.”

Angela Barrett “But yeah, you know.”

Jay Lavrinc You.

Jay Lavrinc “Know, it’s a good it’s a good stopover. We have plenty of hotels, plenty of eateries. We have malls here. We have, you know, anything like that. If you’re just kind of where where can I spend the night in? Here’s to. There’s plenty of hotels here. Beautiful hotels. I mean, we I’m up for, you know, the Florence Center has to.”

Jay Lavrinc Have a.

Jay Lavrinc “Huge, facility there for. They put on different shows as well. So, I mean, I mean, everything here, there’s something to do when, if you if you plan your trip right now, you can’t come down to just expect there’s got to be something and fine to. But you can’t but you can’t, you can’t. We have a museum. You can tour.”

Jay Lavrinc “I mean, there are things that you can do here.”

Jay Lavrinc “Sure, sure. I mean.”

Jay Lavrinc “I mean, a lot of it is scheduled, so you have to really make sure scheduling. But, you know, the other thing is we have a lot of industry here. I mean, people don’t understand how many, you know, industrial companies we have here. I told you about my company, which is AB. They worked in the, the electrical field.”

Jay Lavrinc They make switch gear and sort of switch gear and that kind of stuff.

Jay Lavrinc “You know, I mean, you’ve got.”

Angela Barrett A big one coming.

Jay Lavrinc “Yes, we do.”

Jay Lavrinc Now.

Angela Barrett “That a yeah, the big, battery, technology company. Yeah. Now, when is that supposed to be there? And I guess people.”

Jay Lavrinc Start.

Jay Lavrinc “They’re in the process of building, it’s, for anybody that knows Florence, if they go out towards the airport on East Palmetto and kind of hang a left on copper, it’s up near Wilson High School. They’re already in the process. Building? They’re supposed to be here next year. Now, they started out and they were going to hire about 900 employees.”

Jay Lavrinc Today their goal is 2700.

Jay Lavrinc Wow.

Jay Lavrinc “And, they’re building, a couple million square feet, a couple million square feet facility there. They won’t be making, car batteries. I know that some people say, oh my goodness, you know, car batteries, are they going to work? And so on, so forth. I mean, the the big thing is they’re they’re supporting the BMW plant.”

Jay Lavrinc “That’s where most of their batteries are going to go. What people don’t understand is BMW makes a lot of cars here, but they have a lot overseas.”

Jay Lavrinc

Jay Lavrinc “And about 75 or 80% of their cars go overseas. And the Europeans are more, you know, they’re they’re more ready for the electrical vehicles than we are in the United States. So they’re shipping a lot of those, how to the country.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “For which, yeah. Which a lot of people don’t understand. They’re like, you know, we have all these foreign entities coming in here, and but we do a lot of export, too. We’re not always an importer.”

Jay Lavrinc We do embrace what we do.

Angela Barrett “And that’s a big one. And it’s kind of nice to have it that way where we’re exporting and yeah, you see me.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc For sure.

Angela Barrett Absolutely.

Jay Lavrinc “The, but we.”

Jay Lavrinc “Have, but we have a lot of other businesses here. I mean, you know, QVC. I mean, if you’re a TV fanatic.”

Jay Lavrinc Wife who loves.

Jay Lavrinc “QVC and Fedex, UPS and the United Postal Service seem to come to my house about three times a day, and I.”

Jay Lavrinc “And I, and.”

Jay Lavrinc “I ask her, what did you get today? What did you get today? Well, I can’t tell you. And so I don’t care. But she’s always buying something. QVC has a big facility here. That’s their, shipping facility that I think most of the jewelry comes out of Florence. But that’s, you know, very, very secure sites for sure.”

Jay Lavrinc “You know, there’s like 1200 people that work there, right? Small employers.”

Jay Lavrinc Right? Right.

Jay Lavrinc “I mean, so there’s there’s there’s lots of, employers here. Who does elevator here? They make kilometers, they make escalators. They have a huge facility here, right up the long 95 for driving down 95, I think is right near the foreign sexy. You’ll see the Earth, building right there. So, yeah, it’s a lot. A lot of companies here.”

Jay Lavrinc “GE has the, the MRI they build. The MRI is here. It’s there right out on radio drive. You speak called radio drive to these make radios out there. I found that.”

Jay Lavrinc That’s that’s that’s.

Jay Lavrinc The walkie talkie type radios. They used to make those. Now they’re doing MRI. I’ve.

Jay Lavrinc “That’s crazy. Developing area? Yes, area.”

Angela Barrett “Now, in in Florence. Kind of has a nickname, Magic City. Tell us what.”

Jay Lavrinc Magic city I. I never heard that one. New one to me.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. No, that’s. I never heard that. Yeah. Honestly.”

Jay Lavrinc “Say, I’ve never heard that.”

Angela Barrett “So, Maya.”

Jay Lavrinc You have to tell me why it’s called Magic.

Angela Barrett “City. I’m only give you what I read. Okay. I’m hoping you can elaborate, but it was because of the last few years, I guess. And the big, Boom. All the taking, Florence, all the, industries that have come in. And again, the renovation of, you know, main Street and all of the, you know, new little businesses, local businesses that you’ve got going on there.”

Angela Barrett “This is my understanding, is kind of like.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Angela Barrett “I guess a plug for why you’d want to move to Florence, but you expand on maybe why everybody would want to.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah. You know. Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “Like the main, the main street. There’s an they can I can I, I’m going to get this wrong but they’re in the main streets organization and once a year they pick a city and they give it an award for being, you know, the most beautiful or whatever it is, the most organized or whatever, whatever their criteria is.”

Jay Lavrinc “And they just won. Florence just won that last year. Now they can only do it once. They can only win once. Yeah. So they won that. They won that award last year, which is a very prestigious award.”

Jay Lavrinc “Right, right, right.”

Jay Lavrinc “Practices for so that, you know, so that’s probably why they kind of call it the Magic City. We have a lot of stuff going on here, a lot of new industries. Housing is going crazy here. I know that the mortgage rates are not where everybody wants. But, you know, the housing is still booming. I mean, you can get a really nice house for about two 5237, something like that.”

Jay Lavrinc 237 just sticks in my mind because I just did a ribbon cutting for a company that.

Jay Lavrinc The to.

Jay Lavrinc “37, that’s an I don’t know why that came up, but.”

Jay Lavrinc “It’s,”

Jay Lavrinc “But you know, that that, you know, people say, well, you know, that that has, you know, risen quite a bit lately. Think it has, I mean, used to be, you know, if you could get a nice house for about 175,000. But, you know, as the economy has expanded, whether that’s a good expansion or bad expansion, and we’re not going to get into that kind of stuff.”

Jay Lavrinc “That’s,”

Jay Lavrinc “You know, the housing cost has gone up and.”

Jay Lavrinc “You know, everywhere. Which house? Yes, probably.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, everywhere. Average house here is about 250. You know, for a nice house. For a nice house, you get something a little bit like less for, you know, less money. And then, of course, you have your high end.”

Jay Lavrinc Sure.

Jay Lavrinc We actually have $1 million homes here in in Florence.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, yeah, we’ve.”

Jay Lavrinc “You know, this is the big, medical area. Doctors, typically are paid fairly well. So there’s some higher end homes here. Not saying all doctors have million dollar homes because they don’t.”

Jay Lavrinc “They. Sure, sure, but you’re busy.”

Jay Lavrinc “But your business leaders live here as well. Yeah. Some of them that run the facilities here, they have here as well. So there are some very nice homes. There are some very, you know, affluent neighborhoods. But if you’re somebody like me who likes a little country, I live a little bit. It’s half of Florence. I have about two and a half acres, basically across from a farm.”

Jay Lavrinc “So, you know, it’s a nice, quiet setting. It’s 10 to 15 minutes to any place in town, so I’m not really that far.”

Jay Lavrinc Right.

Jay Lavrinc “If you talk in the Pittsburgh area, you say, you know, it’s going to take me 10 or 15 minutes to get somewhere. That would probably just be the end of my road.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah. I don’t be.

Jay Lavrinc “Coming. Coming to the city of Florence. Right way. Big difference. Way pink way, way different here.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah. Because I guess, if you talk about the, Florence in general, you’ve kind of got your you, like you said, you’re downtown, you’re city area, and then you’ve got some countryside, you know, for people who like country or for people who like, hunting.”

Jay Lavrinc Or.

Jay Lavrinc Spaces.

Jay Lavrinc “Hunt, right? Yeah. You’ve got one.”

Angela Barrett “Of the biggest country clubs, there. And so for people who like to play golf for heaven’s sakes, I mean, I’ve got, gosh, not too far down the road, you’ve got the, IndyCar. Oh, the Darlington Raceway. All of a sudden, if I’m thinking racing could remember the name, the Darlington Raceway. So you got, you know, right. That right there.”

Angela Barrett “And again, like you said, you can get to the beach, you know, do out.”

Jay Lavrinc And and it’s something because.

Jay Lavrinc “Because they, they have actually there’s about four golf courses within 50 miles of each other. And Florence. Right. That sounds unreasonable. You know, kind of unreasonable when you’re cities, only 40,000 people in your county is only 136,000. But there are four golf courses within 15 minutes of each other, basically, or 50 miles from each other, I should say, not 15 minutes.”

Jay Lavrinc “So, you know, there’s traces, farms, country club country from South Carolina. And then the island used to be the crossing. So there’s four.”

Jay Lavrinc Different.

Jay Lavrinc “Levels, of course. Sure. For membership levels, of course.”

Jay Lavrinc “Sure. But they’re all here, right.”

Jay Lavrinc “And then again, you know, if you’re if you’re a beach person, heck, you can get to the beach, you know, and probably an hour and a half hour and 20 minutes, depending on how fast you drive. And if you get.”

Jay Lavrinc “Pulled over for a pull over again, it’s going to take.”

Jay Lavrinc “You longer. But, you know, trying to say the speed limit, I’m not advocating gone too fast. But yeah, it’s just, you can you can actually, you know, you can actually get to the mountains pretty quickly from here to up into North Carolina, right? I mean, there’s, there’s all there’s all kinds of advantages. I mean, the thing that I like and to be honest with you is the fact that it’s a very.”

Jay Lavrinc

Jay Lavrinc Family oriented environment.

Jay Lavrinc Here. Right.

Jay Lavrinc “You know, being a northerner, coming down here and, understanding, the intricacies of living in the South and also the respect that, you know, that the, that the people have for each other is amazing. You know, if you say yes, ma’am, in the North, they think you’re offending them. But if you say yes, ma’am here, that’s.”

Jay Lavrinc “That’s, you know, which are supporting reality, right?”

Jay Lavrinc “That’s that’s supposed to do and or. Yes, sir. You know, I, I, I unfortunately go to Pennsylvania because my kids still live in Pittsburgh and I’ll and somebody ask me something and one day I said to the young lady, I mean, she wasn’t that young, but, you know, in her 50s. And I said, yes, ma’am. She said, I’m not a ma’am.”

Jay Lavrinc “I’m like, I’m I’m sorry. I said, I live in the South, and that’s how we address people to respect them. And she said, well, that’s kind of interesting. So you have to be careful. You have to kind of switch your, your language depending on where you are.”

Jay Lavrinc That’s right. That’s right.

Jay Lavrinc “And I tend to have, you know, Pittsburgh, we say you guys are if you’re really a as they call them in Pittsburgh Windsor yens guys.”

Jay Lavrinc But you know.

Jay Lavrinc “But down here they say oh and hey you you know y’all and oh y’all and I go up there and my brother will say, you haven’t lived in the South that life. And I’ve been there for ten years.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yes, I have. You pick up the language.”

Angela Barrett “That’s right, that’s right.”

Jay Lavrinc But I don’t cut the lights on or off. I turn.

Jay Lavrinc “Them on. Right, but I don’t cut them off.”

Jay Lavrinc My wife does not. She does all the cutting in the.

Jay Lavrinc “House, right.”

Angela Barrett “Right, right. Oh, and what is the new, But is the new, I won’t say gas station, but it’s really not a gas station. That is the bee’s knees.”

Jay Lavrinc “Oh, yeah.”

Angela Barrett Y’all have the new. But.

Jay Lavrinc “Oh, my. Oh, the.”

Angela Barrett “Only one in South Carolina, I guess.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, we have the only one in South Carolina, right on I-95. It’s an excellent one. 70. It is huge. They have 120 pumps there.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “And there and there never seems to be a pump open, but that’s pretty good to get another. They have brisket sandwiches there to, to to to die for. I mean they’re actually very good. They have a convenience store, they have beef jerky.”

Angela Barrett “They have this like a small Walmart in there, you know, been in there.”

Jay Lavrinc One I know.

Angela Barrett “And I just was walking around going, what it is.”

Jay Lavrinc Yes. Oh yeah. They have jewelry.

Jay Lavrinc House goods.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. I mean, you just anything you.”

Angela Barrett Can buy a set of dishes.

Jay Lavrinc Yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. Yeah yeah yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “And Bucky’s Bucky’s kind of turned to turn it upside down here because now this is a, landing spot. If you’re coming down 95 or up 95, I should say either. Right, right.”

Jay Lavrinc “It’s kind of right now, traffic wise.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. It’s been crazy out there, but, Bucky’s is never empty. I can say that.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc It’s an amazing store.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, I’ve only between that line. Have you been there?”

Angela Barrett “Oh, just what’s. Yes.”

Jay Lavrinc Okay.

Angela Barrett “I was going to say my parents were down the beach, and I was at a gun store for. See when this is about.”

Jay Lavrinc “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.”

Jay Lavrinc “That’s amazing. It’s amazing. I just it’s like a, you know, I, I kind of if you go in there your first time, you’re like, you’re a kid in a candy store just looking around like, oh my goodness.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah. It’s overwhelming. Cleanest patterns in the world. I, I was I was happy about that.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. That’s their claim to fame. All these bathrooms and yeah that is and they are they are spotless I mean I don’t know you know, I know personally my bathrooms at home are very clean, but they’re right there.”

Jay Lavrinc They’re right.

Jay Lavrinc “I mean, there’s, they’re they’re in there cleaning is all the time. And it’s just very well organized. The store, you can get anything from half a loaf of bread to, you know.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. No dishes, I mean, you this is you can.”

Jay Lavrinc “You can get you can get little placards for your house, you know. Yeah. Signs and stuff like that. I mean, you can jewelry. There’s clothing there.”

Angela Barrett “Oh, yeah. I think that’s all.”

Jay Lavrinc “Really. Yeah, yeah. So like a small when they first.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. When they first opened, they actually sold deer corn to I don’t know if they still do that, but they didn’t necessarily sell.”

Jay Lavrinc Their you know their. Yeah. Hunting and fishing.

Angela Barrett Area. Absolutely.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. This area PD region is big big hunting and fishing area I mean lots of streams, lots of lakes and ponds and rivers. So many great PD runs through here. You know, we got to Lincoln’s River, we got, Jeffrey’s Creek. I mean, there’s a lot of.”

Angela Barrett The black River.

Jay Lavrinc We can go as black.

Angela Barrett “Yeah, as it says, if that’s the darkest water I’ve ever seen.”

Jay Lavrinc “It is. But it’s beautiful. And it’s like. Yeah, it’s like, it’s almost like black. Like so, so dark, right? It’s very quartz, not quartz, but. Yeah. So, I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of sportsmen, that live here. I am one of those, I do hunt. Don’t don’t let your audience hold that against me.”

Jay Lavrinc There are a lot of us out there in the world. I brought that with me from Pennsylvania. I didn’t learn it down here.

Jay Lavrinc I’m not.

Jay Lavrinc “I’m not a big fisher person. Fisherman. I just, I just haven’t gotten into that. But my buddy next door keeps telling me I’m taking you out. I’m going to show.”

Jay Lavrinc “You how to fish that he keeps threatening, but.”

Jay Lavrinc “We haven’t gone out yet, so we’ll see how that works.”

Angela Barrett “A little slow for me, unless we’re deep sea fishing, but, I get it.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah. That’s a that’s a patience game, but so is hunting. I mean, you’re not always going to see, you know.”

Angela Barrett “Oh, dear. Runs on me. Yeah. I cannot sit in a stand and just still not know what’s next.”

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, yeah. Gotta have a deal. I mean, you you’ll.”

Jay Lavrinc “You’ll see, you’ll.”

Jay Lavrinc See dog I.

Jay Lavrinc “Mean you’ll see them. But you know, it just depends on what you’re looking for that day. I mean, I don’t I’ll just go out to shoot. I go out to look for, you know, the trophy or whatever.”

Jay Lavrinc “So. Right, right, right, right. But I died on children and yeah.”

Angela Barrett “So I we’ve talked a lot about what how great Florence is and it is as far as the chamber, I know you guys, put on a lot of events, for the public. I have one very particular one that I’m interested in. Please explain. They kick the chicken, chicken.”

Jay Lavrinc Chicken and chili.

Jay Lavrinc Fest. Yeah. I we’re.

Angela Barrett Actually both. Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “You’re talking to the right person because I am the I am the leader of that group. This is a great, opportunity. We, like Florence. After five, we closed down Bargain Street. We have a band, and then we invite competitors to come. They’re not paid. There’s a prize. They have to. They have to come.”

Jay Lavrinc “There’s a small fee to to get in, but we invite competitors in, and a lot of times it’s companies here in town who have, you know, employees who love to cook that have cookers and equipment and whatever. We supply all the wings. They have to spy all the sauce, the cooking, the equipment, they have to cook their stuff.”

Jay Lavrinc “And then they can also be in the chili contest because we have chili in a animal wings contest. We, giving them an award or our prize, you know, I think it’s like 750 for the winner and 500 and then maybe 300 for the third place. So we we do top three chilies a little bit less because they’re entry fees, like, it’s a great opportunity.”

Jay Lavrinc “The wings are cheap, I.”

Jay Lavrinc Can tell you that.

Jay Lavrinc “You’re not gonna you’re not going to get them any, any cheaper and at any of the wings places. But, it’s an opportunity for, both individuals and companies to come down and, you know, show how good of cooks they are. And then we have, judges that judge the, the, the wings and will announce those winners.”

Jay Lavrinc “That’s the first, that kind of third place, right at the end of the at the end of the evening, it starts by five and it’s over about nine. We have, you know, things for the kids to do. There’s a water park here. There’s other things to do. So it’s an opportunity for families to come down, have fun, means and chill.”

Jay Lavrinc Enjoy the evening. Listen to live band.

Jay Lavrinc And eat good food and eat good food.

Jay Lavrinc “And then. And then there’s a People’s Choice award where people can go around and, you know, there’s a, barcode or EPS or UPC code, and they can just click on their phone and vote, that through community broadcasters, they’re good enough to sponsor that for us. And then that is what we call the People’s Choice Award. And then that’s awarded that, afterwards, after we tally up all the votes.”

Jay Lavrinc “And that proves that, person or persons, will get a $100 gift certificate and then a plaque and, you know, then we’ll put it on our Facebook page. Ha. Social media and so forth. We’ve really gotten, a lot of press within our social media. Right now. We have 674 members.”

Angela Barrett Okay. Can I ask how many calls?

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “Yeah, 674. But we have over 2000 people that we send our newsletter out to because there are business associates and or, you know, working at the businesses. So and they like to get that news and there’s, you know our, our, our chamber link newsletter goes out every Monday typically. It has a lot of news and it has a lot of things that are going on the chamber.”

Jay Lavrinc “We just don’t advocate the chamber stuff. There’s no business. Yeah. Information in there. There’s some different things that are coming to town business wise or, you know, events. So it gives our clientele an opportunity if they’ve got something to come up to, kind of put it into our newsletter. So that, you know, people know what’s going on in town.”

Jay Lavrinc “So it’s, it’s really broad based. And then of course, you know, as you know, or if you don’t know, you probably too know. I have a, radio program that I host. It’s called Chamber Lake Radio. And we do that time we broadcast every Sunday at noon, 95.3 FM. We.”

Jay Lavrinc “We,”

Jay Lavrinc Record that on Tuesday so that we.

Jay Lavrinc Should be.

Jay Lavrinc In there on Sunday.

Jay Lavrinc Church time. So.

Jay Lavrinc “And, what I try to do there is to, invite, any kind are chamber members. They have to be chamber members, so they can’t just be anybody. Yeah, sure. And there’s a reason for that as well. You know, we want to we want and.”

Jay Lavrinc Point.

Angela Barrett Support. Yeah. The the ones that support the chamber. Sure.

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “And we sit down there and it’s a half an hour program. Basically we just talk about the person, the business, what their business does. And it’s very informative. It’s, I learn more about my clients each time I do one of these programs, you know, because I know a lot of them. I know what they do.”

Jay Lavrinc “I, you know, I’m kind of in the institution that has brought them into the chamber. And, so I learn a lot more about them. And then there’s always, you know, in any conversation, there’s always the afterwards. Right. So we talk for a half an hour here, and then typically it’s another 15 or 20 minutes. So we talk often.”

Jay Lavrinc Right.

Jay Lavrinc “Of fun. So and in some cases we could probably do an hour. But you know half an hour. It’s just probably that good. Good cut off point for right people. But we, we talk to a lot of people. We have done, I think in three years, probably over 120 530 programs, that’s recorded every week. I enjoy it.”

Jay Lavrinc “I get to know a lot more about a lot of the clients and and people and personalities and how they got there. And the stories are amazing. I mean, to see, you know, somebody that was an Army brat who’s now in charge of a financial organization that he runs, you know, it’s it’s amazing. I mean, just just the stories of teacher that was also he was a teacher.”

Jay Lavrinc “He now has his own finance organization. I mean, it’s just, you know, some of those things are just kind of interesting how they occur.”

Jay Lavrinc Absolutely.

Jay Lavrinc “How people get to where they are. Because, you know, I mean, people people always think, you know, when I was a manager, they thought that I was, you know, came out of college and became a manager, but I didn’t do that.”

Jay Lavrinc I right to the hat.

Jay Lavrinc Nobody just does that.

Jay Lavrinc So yeah.

Jay Lavrinc “You know, it’s interesting to see and hear people’s stories.”

Jay Lavrinc Yeah.

Angela Barrett “Absolutely. It it you’re right. It is one of the best parts about, you know, doing what we do. And, it’s, it’s a fast way to learn. You never judge a book by the cover, because you don’t have a story. You know, if you do not know a story, until you do. And it’s, then you probably don’t know all of it, but,”

Angela Barrett “Well, thank you so much, for being here today. It has been a pleasure to talk with you and to learn more about farts and all the things they have going on and and coming. But thank you very much. Enjoyed it.”

Jay Lavrinc “But I appreciate the opportunity. I thank you for allowing me to be on your podcast. And, maybe one of these days I’ll get you on my radio program. We’ve talked about your podcast.”

Angela Barrett “Yeah, sure. That’d be great. Thanks.”

Jay Lavrinc Hi. You’re welcome.